Malaysia Airlines Commercial Director, Hugh Dunleavy shared what transpired on the fateful day flight MH370 vanished.
In an article published by The London Evening Standard today, Dunleavy said that he has not stopped looking for the plane upon receiving an emergency text stating the disappearance of the plane from its radar that night.
His initial thoughts were the incompetency of the pilot or that there could be some faulty with the communication system. Today, after three months with not a trace or clue of the plane’s whereabouts, the only thing that Dunleavy is sure of is that looking for the plane can take forever.
“Something untoward happened to that plane. I think it made a turn to come back, a sequence of events overtook it which has haltered it from returning to base. I believe it’s somewhere in the south Indian Ocean. But when [a plane] hits the ocean it’s like hitting concrete. The wreckage could be spread over a big area. And there are mountains and canyons in that ocean. I think it could take a really long time to find. We’re talking decades.”
Dunleavy recalls every single distinct moment that emerged in the effort to look for the plane. The one million and one questions that have lingered on his mind especially when 'bogus' information has been disseminated like wildfire during the drought.
After only 60-minutes in the control room, rumours started pouring in on social media. The preliminary ‘rumour’ was that the plane has made an emergency landing in Nanning airport.
Dunleavy arrived in Beijing by midnight to console and consult a pool of grief-stricken family and friends of the passengers on-board the unfortunate plane.
He said the airline’s teams of caregivers worked around the clock, some even put in 48 hours non-stop, attending to the endless cries and pleas of the family members who are in search for some or any concrete clue of the incident.
Conspiracy theories and experts inputs, speculations and ideas did nothing but aggravate the state of mind of all those affected. In the end, after 32 hours of the tragedy, Dunleavy announced:
“I think you all need to be prepared for the worst.”
Dunleavy’s announcement was not well received by the 1,500 people in the ballroom. The crowd went berserk, some were screaming while others fainted and one even had a heart attack. The 'drama' ensued with bottles being hurled at Dunleavy.
All anger, frustration and blame were directed to the Malaysian government -- for the lack of urgency and incompetency in detecting objects with all the advanced technology on hand.
“It made people look incompetent, but the truth is, it’s early in the morning, you’re not at war with anyone, why would you jump to the conclusion that something really bad is now transpiring?” said Dunleavy.
Dunleavy said that he has strong faith and will not yield to the fact that Malaysia Airlines did the very best for the Chinese relatives affected – taking care of all the bills, allowance of USD5,000 (RM15,000) and organising 520 passports and Malaysian visas -- and prepping a plane for the Chinese families to fly to Kuala Lumpur.
However, these efforts have yet to justify the hasty decision of sending out text messages to these relatives stating that it was “beyond doubt” their loved ones were killed.
“That wasn’t done in a callous way,” Dunleavy says, “we only got 15 minutes’ notice that the government was going to make that announcement, there were 600 people in six different hotels, and they had suggested text messages to us at the start. We thought, ‘isn’t it better they get the message before the media relays it?’”
Malaysia Airlines expects the tragedy to cost beyond the USD500million mark and now that three months have passed, it is Dunleavy’s responsibility to get the business back on track. His monumental task is to regain the trust of the people towards the airlines especially when demand slumped drastically and bookings from China fell by 65 per cent.
“We will always remember MH370. We will take care of the people and we’re working on what sort of a memorial we will have. But we are a business. We have to keep flying as we have 20,000 staff, shareholders, and 50,000 passengers each day. We owe it to them to get the airline back and move beyond MH370.”
Linawati Adnan
Wed Jun 25 2014
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